Best of the WHL

The annual "Best of the East" poll, as done by Brandon Wheat Kings p-b-p voice Bruce Luebke, is out for 2009-10. Click here to read.

And because I'm not sure I mentioned it at the time, the Tri-City Herald released the "Best of the West" last week too.

I like these things....it's fun to see who the league's players, coaches, etc think are tops at the various categories. Check them out if you haven't already.

Thursday thoughts

Lots of stuff happened due to last night's games....

Regina lost again at home. They have 8 games left - 5 on the road - and are 7 points out of a playoff spot. In related news, Rita McNeil performed after the game.

Vancouver's win also clinched the B.C. division title for them, ensuring them at least the #2 seed in the first round of the West playoffs.

Chilliwack beat Prince Albert and thus clinched a playoff spot in the West, the 6th team to do so. An hour later, Kelowna lost in a shootout in Lethbridge but still clinched a playoff spot with their loser point, so they are the 7th team in the West to book a postseason appearance. They also gained a point on Kamloops in the battle for #6/#7/#8 in the West, as the Blazers lost in Edmonton. But they lost a point to Chilliwack in that #6/#7/#8 battle too of course....

Seattle reeled off their 3rd win in a row by beating Prince George. Too little too late for the T-Birds though, who are still going to be mathematically eliminated by the end of the weekend.

Moose Jaw lost in OT to Saskatoon, but the loser point zips the Warriors ahead of Swift Current into 7th place in the East. Saskatoon's win moves them three points up on Brandon in the battle for the East division, and two points up on Calgary in the battle for first overall in the league.

And Everett went into Spokane and won, moving them four points clear of the Chiefs and within three points of Tri-City in the battle for 1st-2nd-3rd-4th in the U.S. division. That is one tight, excellent division this year.

Oh, and there was a game in Vancouver too....Canada and somebody....

Is it just me, or was the total lack of emotion or interest on the part of the Russians surprising to anyone? Sure, Canada came out going great guns and put the pressure on the Russians from the get-go, but there was just no push-back from the Russians. They just sat there and took their beating, they barely fought back and didn't seem to care. For a team lead by a fiery guy like Ovechkin, I expected more spirit....but then, he disappeared too after a couple minutes of physical play.

Nabokov was terrible in net and I will never understand why the coach didn't pull him after the 4th goal. Canada was up 3-0, the Russians called their timeout and seemed to get a little bit going after the timeout - they scored to make it 3-1 and were showing some signs of life. Then Nabokov gives up that brutal goal to Morrow and that might have been the backbreaker there....but the coach doesn't give him the hook. Go figure.

What a difference 24 hours makes, eh.....this time yesterday everyone in Canada was gnashing their teeth over the situation the team was in, and this morning they look to have the easiest path to the gold medal game of any of the four teams remaining. The Slovaks knocked off the Swedes and beat the Russians in the round-robin so Canada would do well not to take them lightly but still - Slovakia has never won an Olympic hockey medal and hasn't had great success at the World Championships lately either - not since they won it in 2002 anyway. They have to be the huge underdogs to Canada.

USA-Finland in the other semifinal should be a much tougher game for both teams.

Tuesday musings

Bunch of notes off the old blotter today....

An idea to save womens hockey at the Olympics: how about until some other countries attain the level of play that Canada and the USA play at, we ditch the tiresome round-robin routine of watching Canada & USA beat up on helpless opponents and instead just have the Canadian and American girls play a best-of-seven for the gold? That would guarantee you at least four games (and almost certainly more since I doubt either country is capable of sweeping the other) of really good womens hockey instead of just one - the gold medal game - that we get now.

To mens hockey....lost to most amidst the national agony that is Canada's loss to the USA is the simple fact that had Canada just beaten Switzerland in regulation, they'd still have finished in the top four and gotten a bye to the quarterfinals even with the loss to the USA. They'd be in Finland's current position and awaiting the winner of a Finland-Latvia game, with a rematch against the USA in the semifinals if they beat Finland/Latvia. Instead they're on the other half of the bracket and will now have to beat Russia and Sweden just to get to the gold medal game.

It's not the loss to the USA that was costly....it was failing to get 3 points from the Swiss game that really has them in the position they're in.

(And as an aside, that Canada-USA game goes down as the most-watched TV program in Canadian history....10.6 million viewers saw the whole thing and 21.5 million watched at least part of it. That is about two-thirds of the entire population of Canada that caught at least part of the game. Crazy numbers.)

Back to the WHL now....

The Chilliwack Bruins have an interesting promotion going on to try to attract season ticket holders for next year. If you put down a $50 deposit (I assume nonrefundable) on a 2010-11 season ticket right now, you get a free ticket to each of the Bruins' last three regular season games this season, plus one for every home playoff game this season as well. Since they are guaranteed two home dates in the playoffs, you get minimum five games for your $50 - and if they manage to win a few playoff games, the deal gets better and better. And if you don't really want 2010-11 season tickets, you could even walk away from your deposit during the summer and not feel ripped off....

It might be a tall order, but Jordan Weal of the Pats has a chance to do something that has not been done in the WHL in 11 years - score 100+ points in his 17 year old season. Weal has 86 points in 62 games and the Pats have 10 games left, so Weal needs to get 14 points in those 10 games. He's on pace to accomplish that and end up with exactly 100 points. The last 17 year old to hit the century mark in the WHL was Pavel Brendl of the Hitmen back in 98-99, when he scored 134 points in 68 games.

Still with the Pats, a couple folks have e-mailed me for my take on "Teubertgate"....for those of you who don't know what that is, the Pats' Colten Teubert chased Brandon's Mark Stone around the ice with a minute left in Brandon's 10-2 win over the Pats on Friday, until Stone dropped the gloves. Teubert KO'd Stone in the fight and Stone ended up in the hospital overnight with a concussion. Needless to say, some members of the Wheat Kings were not happy with Teubert and let him know on his way off the ice, as well as (allegedly) outside the Pats dressing room.

Personally, I'm not a fan of a 19 year old goading a 17 year old into a fight, especially not when the 19 year old has dozens of WHL fights under his belt and the 17 year old has ONE. If you want to fight and "send a message", go after somebody in your own age or experience class at least. There's 3 or 4 players on the Wheat Kings who fit the bill and would have probably answered the bell.

All that being said, Stone DID drop the gloves and so what happened to him, while unfortunate, was the result of a consensual fight. So you can't get on Teubert for the outcome of the fight....only for the fact that he picked the fight against a non-fighter in the first place. The Pats and Wheat Kings play twice more this season, a home-and-home in the last two games of the season for both teams. Regina will be long out of the playoff picture by then and the Wheat Kings might have settled on a playoff seed by then too, so Teubert should probably be prepared to fight Brandon's tougher customers a few times in those two games....

And lastly, I'm in agreement with a reader who pointed out yesterday that my assumption that Tri-City was safely in possession of first place in the U.S. division is looking like a faulty one. I will update the playoff stretch drive post later and incorporate some numbers related to Everett, Portland, and Spokane's efforts to catch the Americans for first place....

Loan The Podium

Gonna take a detour from the WHL this morning to take a peek at some Olympic stats.....if you live in Canada, you may be vaguely aware of the teeth-gnashing going on in some quarters right now over the failure of some Canadian athletes at these Games to live up to what was expected of them. Basically Canada has 9 medals right now and were expecting to have between 5 and 10 more at this point. The "Own The Podium" funding initiative put into place for these Games (to help Canadian athletes achieve medals at these home Games), is now being derogatorily referred to in some places as "Loan The Podium".

But here's some really interesting numbers I put together though....the number of overall top-six finishes in the Games so far:

	Gold	Silver	Bronze	4th	5th	6th	Top-6
USA	7	7	10	4	4	6	38
Canada	4	4	1	6	11	7	33
Germany	6	7	5	2	5	3	28
Austria	2	3	3	6	4	5	23
Russia	2	3	3	8	0	4	20
Norway	5	3	4	4	1	3	20
France	2	2	4	0	3	5	16
Switzerland	5	0	2	4	1	3	15
Netherlands	3	1	1	3	2	3	13
South Korea	4	4	1	1	3	0	13
China	3	1	1	1	2	2	10
Sweden	3	1	2	4	0	0	10
Italy	0	1	3	3	1	1	9
Japan	0	1	2	1	3	1	8
Finland	0	1	0	1	2	2	6
Slovenia	0	1	1	1	2	1	6
Poland	0	3	1	0	2	0	6
Slovakia	1	1	1	0	1	0	4
Great Britain	1	0	0	0	0	2	3
Belarus	0	0	2	0	0	1	3
Kazahkstan	0	1	0	0	2	0	3
Latvia	0	2	0	1	0	0	3
Czech Republic	1	0	2	0	0	0	3
Australia	1	1	0	0	0	0	2
Croatia	0	1	1	0	0	0	2
Hungary	0	0	0	0	0	1	1
Ukraine	0	0	0	0	1	0	1
Estonia	0	1	0	0	0	0	1

Canada is actually 2nd overall in top-six finishes, behind only the USA....but the USA has 24 medals out of their 38 top-six finishes (63% of their top-six finishes are medals), Germany has 18 medals from 28 top-six finishes (even better at 64%), and Canada has only 9 medals from their 33 top-sixes (27%).

Clearly, Canada is coming very close to medals in many events, but they are falling just short of the podium whereas other countries are "finishing the job", so to speak.

It's an odd thing....I mean, in most sports the difference between being 1st and being 6th is not that great. Most events have multiple athletes who are capable of winning with a good performance on any given day, and somebody who is first today could be sixth tomorrow. But Canadians are consistently coming up on the short end this year.....what do you think is causing this.....the added pressure of competing at home? Bad luck? Something else?